Hangman
by Augestine
Summary: A supernatural Version of the Hunger Games. Violence and sass to be expected.


He woke with a start. His skin covered with the chill the racked through his body, caving a path down his face with beads of sweat. His breath came heavy but began to slow as clarity returned to him and he started to recognize the little pieces of his home materializing around him. The small room surrounding him was just off the little hall leading to his father's room and the living area passed that. This was his room, the one he shared with Sammy. Dim light was beginning to push through the tattered shades strung up above the window telling him that the day was about to begin. On any other day he would go over to the bed across from him and rouse the little boy huddled inside the blankets while their father made his way out to the shop to start work on the newest trains and motorcars that the Capitals think tank required asp, but not today. Today was the day of the reaping.

The young man didn't bother trying to go back to sleep, he knew that any peaceful thoughts he had were far go to the inevitable that would be waiting in the town square in just a few hours. And inevitability that it seemed Sam had finally grown into, his birthday being just the day before. The boy was still sleeping seemingly peacefully and he didn't want to ruin it by rushing into the worst day of his life. He pulled on his boots and yanked an oil stained t-shirt over his head. He found his Dads old leather jacket and threw it on over his clothes. There was barely a chill outside but he liked the way that the layers felt around him. Like an exoskeleton working to keep everything out. He made his way as quietly as he could through the small hall, avoiding loose floorboards knowing the chorus of its small creeks would find a way into his father's room and wake him unnecessarily. He wasn't the best company when he was woken up before the sun was done rising, not that he father had even been the best of company. He was told that his old man had once been a very likeable person. He often got told that he had the same since of humor not that he ever thought of his father being capable of having one. Even still, he could remember little pieces of a happier man, one who didn't drown his sorrow in poorly brewed moonshine and misdirected rage but whoever he was had burned in the fire.

The front room was dirty, he hadn't had much time to clean up after he got home from the assembly line after he'd gotten out of school, a requirement for all young men over the age of fourteen, and his father had come in much later to toss some things around. The young man grabbed a few bottles off the floor on his way outside, squinting when the sun hit him in the face. Just another morning of being entirely too awake before he needed to be. He couldn't think of a better way to start the day. He made his way through the small clutter of shabby houses in too much shamble for him to really call a neighborhood. Not that he felt he really had any place to complain seeing as they lived in one of the nicer parts of district six. Most of the houses in the grubby part down toward the train station barely had enough walls to be called a house. And theirs had three rooms. There was so much to be thankful for. Unfortunately with all the excitement going on a little ways up the street he was having a hard time bring any of those reason's to mind. The young man turned his back on the centermost point of town just through the small allies between the factories and made his way over to the line between the neighborhoods. At the edge of town there was a small medal structure that he could only assume was once part of a house before Panem was fully formed. Rust had overcome it along with vines and other various forms of wild life. He was positive that if a squirrel so much as jumped on its roof that the entire thing would collapse but there was something about the little structure that felt more like home to the boy that his actual house did. He spent most of his free time in the little structure close to the woods, the peace keeper having long sense stopped coming out to check on it. Usually he was completely alone when he closed himself in his workshop, but sometimes, like today, he had visitors.

A young woman was leaning against the door, she had long brown hair that hung loose around her face and a green dress that suited her tanned skin. "Dean," she smiled straightening herself up, he couldn't help but notice the way she arched her back a little to give her chest and extra boost.

He raised a brow and smiled crookedly at her, "Lisa," he grinned at her, "What did you break this time?" he asked teasingly and she scrunched up her nose at him.

"My dad botched up our oven gas stove. Think you can fix it?"

The young man nodded, "Just give me a minute." He told her lifting the wide, white door that stretched across the opening and ducking inside. There wasn't much inside of his work space just an old desk and scrap medal and a few pieces of a vehicle that he found in the junk yard that was so old it still ran on gasoline. Sometimes when Dean was alone with the pieces he would spend hours taking them apart and shining each piece daydreaming about the day he could put the entire thing together and drive…anywhere. Far away from the district. Far away from his father. And as far away from the Capital and their Hunger Games as possible. He bit back the bitterness that the thought put in his mouth, reminding him to put on a good face for Lisa who hadn't always been fortunate enough to find extra work tinkering around with old stove tops, fixing what she could here and there. Who's husband had passed in a factory accident and left her with a kid she didn't know how to take care of and a father that could hardly take care of himself. He didn't want to give her another thing to worry about on top of all of that.

In return she gave him quiet as they walked through the town with his tool box clutched tight in his hand, trying to ignore all of the commotion that the peacekeepers were creating while the Capital work crews built up large monitors so that the people who couldn't quite fit into the town square could still watch all the excitement. It made Dean sick knowing that there were people out there, no matter how warped their upbringing who actually enjoyed watching children being taken away from their families and forced into an arena where they were either killed or stripped of all their innocence. It was difficult to see how that was a fair price for a war their generation had never been a part of. But that was just _the way things where_, like Sam reminded him anytime he brought it up out at his little garage or their dad would drunken rant out the windows. His little brother had always been so much more reasonable that he had. He would never make it in the games.

The errand only took him a few minutes and he was back on his way taking the long way around the square to avoid as much of the set up as was possible. They made the games seem like some sort of festival, as if people were supposed to celebrate the destruction of their families. They forced them to watch and cheer and hurt when the people they cared about where pushed into barbarism and wanted them to function in normal society, no, _civilized_ society, afterward as if none of it had ever happened. Dean secretly thought that was why they paid them such a hearty prize. Because they knew that after all of that they wouldn't be normal again, that any little thing could set them off and it was easier just to keep them from being around other people. They could put on a show for the cameras but when those were gone, nothing was left. At least nothing human.

But no one decentever won the Hunger Games, did they?

The district was starting to wake up when he made his way back toward his, weary faces peaking through windows to watch the commotion that was sure to come. The butcher was open, he could see a little light pushing out of the two small windows in the front so he made his way in, the medium height blond woman behind the counter greeting him with a grave nod. "Should've known I'd be seeing you today." She chuckled without much humor and he gave her his best attempt at a smile.

"How is that slicer working for you?" he asked and the woman grunted throwing him a look of secret fondness even though she would never let on.

"It cuts, mostly. Keeps getting jammed." She raised a brow lifting the counter top to let him into the back, "Get it to even out and I'll give you something fresh for the feast tonight." She told him with a smirk and he rolled his eyes.

"Cause it's _such_ a celebration." He grumbled and she wacked him over the back of his head.

"You wanna say that a little louder, I don't think the peacekeepers caught all of that." She hissed and he shrank into himself grumbling apologies as he pushed further into the shop. The back of the small shop was familiar to Dean, having spent more than his fair share of hours back there. After the fire that took one of the factories trapping his mother inside his dad sort of reverted into himself, only ever speaking to the bottom of the bottle in his hand. What little money they had saved was gone fast, wasted on the freshest brew or gambled away. Dean wasn't old enough to work in the factory yet and Sam was barely walking. He figured that they would be dead either way so he took to stealing. Just little things at first. A piece of bread, handful of flower, meat scraps and abandon cups of stew. Just the things they needed that could help tie them over until his dad resurfaced. But he didn't resurface. He fell deeper into a place that only his mother could ever pull him out of, his love for her becoming his only redeeming quality the longer that he let his children struggle. Dean became more daring. He took more, more often. He tested the limits of what he could get away with. The longer he went without getting caught, the more he almost wanted to. He wanted the punishment. He wanted people to see the real justice of their beloved Capitol at work.

But when he was found out, it wasn't by who he had expected. He'd been watching by the back of the butcher shop under the little window the peaked into the back room that he found oddly clean for some place so grotesque. He usually stayed away from the butcher able to live off of what he could catch in the little cages he left open around the little workshop he had yet to break into and the little bits he could take but it had been a cold winter and the small shop looked more and more appealing every day until he couldn't resist the draw. He took periodic glances through the butcher's window waiting until the blond woman disappeared into the front to sneak through the back door. A pig lay in pieces across the counter. He only needed a good chunk, something of substance to settle in Sam's stomach for the night. He listened close to the butcher woman bartering with the man up front and snatched a few slices off the counter making a run for the door but he had been so small back then that she picked him right up off the ground. She should have turned him in, that's what any other shop owner would have done. They might have even gone easy on him considering he was just a child. But she didn't. Instead she put him to work to pay for the things that he was trying to steal. She taught him how to gut game and take the skin off wild dogs, where to cut to get the bust cut of meat and how to handle a knife. She told him that it was a punishment but somehow always managed to make it fun. She turned everything into a little game, a race, a song until she figured out that if he tinkered with something long enough he could fix it or make it better. He made her all sorts of things over the years and in return his services she paid him in meat.

Even years later he was still baffled by her kindness, the shop giving him a homey feeling he only ever head when he was out in his garage or alone with Sam. Taking a deep breath of air he felt the impossible, rarely meant smile forming on his lips that he bit back before his bitter thoughts could ruin the feeling and set to work on the slicer. When he got everything finished she gave him a bigger hunk of meat than usual and met his raised brow with a grim smile. "How many names you got in there?" she asked.

He shrugged, "Fifteen I think." The butcher nodded and gave him a strong pat on the back.

"Good luck." She told him and he ducked out of the shop.

He took the back way home not wanting to draw any more attention to himself than he normally did. He had never been a bad kid but enough people knew him and used him that he might be stopped and he wasn't in much of a talking mood. Sam was already dressed when he got there, in the outfit he'd first worn to the reaping. It was small on him seeing as he was all knees and elbows but Dean was convinced that he wouldn't have anyone to impress. "It's small." Sam complained and his brother just shrugged.

"It's fine." He told him tossing the meat onto the counter and going over to the water basin to rinse off his face and hands the best he could be the oil never really came out of his nail buds. "Where's dad?" he asked and Sam frown.

"Hunting." He told him and Dean nodded. He would be hunting. The reaping was a mandatory event but somehow his father always managed to weasel his way out of it. The Peace Keepers had come looking for him one year when he didn't show up. John had stepped outside and when he came back that was the last they had heard of it. After that he just went hunting, disappearing into the forest before it got started and coming back long after it was done. The boys ate quietly and Dean dressed in one of his father's nicer shirts, straightening the tie the best that he could manage on his own. 'Let's go." He told Sam and they headed out to the town square together.

It was quiet in the district, everyone too nervous and some of them even excited. They were in one of the middle districts. Not quite close enough to be a Capitol favorite but close enough for them to be important enough not to over abuse. Not that he really knew that they did that to other districts but he could feel it in his gut. Whenever he saw the Tributes from other places he wondered how they could have gotten that way, so skinny and pail, all of their ribs looking like they were about to bust out of their guts before someone got the chance to do it for them. It disgusted him just thinking about it. Dean kept moving, pulling Sam along behind him, teeth he hadn't grown into bighting down on his bottom lip as he looked around at all of the kids in nice clothes like him. Most of the others looked a little awkward in their hand-me-downs too. That seemed to make his brother feel better at least. Dean just tried to block them all out as they came up to the lines and he had to let Sam go. He watch him walk timidly up to the capital woman and let her prick his finger. They had him on record now. For some reason that made him more nervous than anything. He let the man in his line take his blood and quickly made his way to the other line of fifteen year olds and frown deeply into the back of the heads of the boys in front of them. He wondered if any of them ever felt as angry about any of this as he did but he would never ask. He knew better than to be too vocal about his distaste for the Capital even if he had been loose with his tongue earlier that day.

It didn't take long for the Mayor to make his way onto the stage with a large smile plastered onto his face. He was followed by a short procession of victors that looked just about as happy to be there as he did. He had grown up around all of them but they all still felt like strangers to him. He focused his attention and the last one out the doors of city hall. Bobby Singer, a man in his mid thirties who had long since lost the battle of civilized social behaviors and carried a bottle with him everywhere he went. He was at least a quiet drunk. Nothing like his father whose consumption bustled to angry shouts. He rocked back on his heels and listened to the mayor drone on about the district rebellion and how the Hunger Games were their punishment and redemption. After his short history presentation he called their capital representative to take the microphone from him. Gabriel was a slight man with a smile too big for his face. But other than that rather unfortunate feature he was the most ordinary Capital person that Dean had ever seen. He wore a bright blue suit with black pin stripes that continued perfectly into his shoes and his hair was pulled back from his face in an of sort of pompadour and Dean tuned him out the second he started talking. He wasn't all that nervous. He knew kids with twice the number of names in that giant glass bowl than he had and Sammy only had one. The odds were nothing but in their favor.

But they were not in the favor of Joe Harvell, a petite blond girl who was just a year under him in school. Her face was white as a sheet when the crowd moved away from her, giving her a perfectly clear path out of line and to the stage. She walked, shocked out of the crowd, deaf to her mother's pleading cries as she took her place next to Gabriel. Dean watched Mrs. Harvell sob into her husband's arms wondering who the Games were really worse for when Gabriel moved onto the boys. It was hard to get himself to pay attention when he had tuned so far into the crying. He was so focused on her that he almost missed the name being called out. "Samuel Winchester."

No.

The air had been knocked out of him, leaving him suspended in a place where he had no control and no way out. He watched deftly as the crowd parted a second time in front of him and the gangly mess that was his little brother stepped out and just couldn't handle it. "No," he hissed, pushing his way through the boys around him. Someone tried to grab him back but he rammed his elbow into their side and the rest of the boys made way. "No!" he yelled attracting the attention of the peace keepers making their way toward Sam who was looking at him with such big eyes. How could he ever kill anyone? Sam was going to die. He was frantic then. He finally got out into the clear row, Sam made a step toward him but two peace keeps grabbed his arms and started to pull him away. "No!" he yelled again running after him before he was caught around the middle and yanked backwards. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't let Sam die. "Let me go!" he kicked at the man and hit at him, his elbow crying out when it met the metal of his suit, "I volunteer!" he shouted his voice desperately rasping, this time they stilled. The man stopped moving against him and he took the opportunity to break out of his grasp and step up to the men pulling at his brother and pull Sam behind his back. "I volunteer as tribute."


End file.
